This trailer to the movie IOUSA was mailed to me, and it is worth watching:
The other crazy thing about the McCain/Palin gambit to lie repeatedly about the Bridge to Nowhere is that they are making earmarks the central focus of their campaign, as if earmarks were the major problem. Now granted, no one likes wasteful spending, but really, some perspective is necessary:
For my part, I think the Republican preoccupation with earmark reform reveals a truly bizarre view of what is wrong with the federal government and how its dysfunction might best be fixed, as if pork-barrel spending were the main problem with Republican governance over the last decade. Still, this is the field where McCain and Palin have chosen to fight, and this is what they are choosing to lie about, so it seems fair that they pay some political price for that.
The total national debt, as I write this, is $9,679,000,000,000.00 (nine and a half trillion).
The Budget for 2008 is close to $3,000,000,000,000.00 (three trillion).
Our budget deficit for this year is going to range in between $400-500,000,000,000.00 (four hundred to five hundred billion, give or take a few billion).
The total value of wasteful earmarks in 2008 (according to CAGW) will be approximately $18,000,000,000.00 (eighteen billion).
In other words, when McCain talks about earmarks, he is talking about 3% of our annual budget deficit, .6% of our annual budget, and a number too small to even report when discussing our national debt. Or, put another way, he is talking about two months in Iraq, something he wants to keep going indefinitely.
Not only are they lying about Palin’s involvements with earmarks, they are just not being serious about the horrible economic problems we face. These are not serious people.